Summer Trips 2023 I

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This will probably be a boring post and very banal.  I dont care. All along I tell people this is just my personal journal of being a father as my kids grow up, made public.  If you come and read it, great, thanks. I appreciate it. If no one does, fine also.  Everybody thinks and often attacks a banal life as bondage and or boring. I dont. I think it is natural. And boring is a matter of perspective. I could never ever be bored in my life. Anyway... here we are: 

This

As I said in my last post, I dont like to go on so many trips.  My wife does that. I get to a place and thats it.  Stay there, take it easy, sleep late and read a book on the dock. Jesus, I got a beautiful lake in front of my nose, I go swimming right here. Everybody comes here, why should I go someplace else when I am here?   BUT, with such a long vacation you HAVE to do some trips.  

"Trips" is the wrong word.  Moving or driving is more like it.  Hey when you live in the woods and are ten miles away from any town, any outing is a small trip.  

Some of our past small trips cant happen anymore because I guess sorry to say my daughters have grown out of them.  I dont see why they have to be too old for the splash pad, but well, we dont go there I guess because the laundromat is closed over there now.  The splash pad in Kingsley is great. I wrote about that one once. 

We made two drivings on Sundays to see the "Barbenheimer" movies.  We made drivings to buy clothes a couple times. Yup, that is considered an "outing", our moving and doing something for some day.  For some reason my older daughter wanted to go to Target and Walmart to see the great American buying malls.  We went to both.  

Doing the grocery shopping is a great small outing. When you live in the city you can walk to the grocery any and every day to get whatever you lack.  But when you live in the woods with a "longish" drive to town, you get everything in one or two shoppings a week.  Its like commando patrol this year.  One girl goes over to aisle 4 to get the juices and milk and one girl goes to aisle 2 to get the canned goods and cookies.  I stay in aisle one to get fruits and vegetables.  For some reason grocery shopping is much more fun in the summer doing these big shoppings and getting lots of food.  I do have a budget, but I think we went over the budget this year on food.  It was usually about 20 bucks more or so over from what I estimated before going.  Rats.  

A nice regular outing we do several times in the summer is to the local branch of the public library.  I think I have mentioned this spot before in other summers. I cannot deny its importance and fun.  

As soon as we can when we get to our vacation spot we go to the library for books.  Each of us takes out at least 7 books for trying or a bunch in a series we hope we will get to reading.  We go to the library for books at least once a week and it is great that even on this out of the way corner of the state they can get so many books through loan from other libraries.  I think the library has been an important pillar all my summers from when I was a small tot to this summer. And it has been for my daughters too, although this summer I was quite dismayed that my older daughter did more "work" on tik tok and social sites than reading.  If this is a trend among young people, a switch from reading books, to just mindlessly reading social sites and looking at tik tok..... we will be in a very dark period for kids very soon, with no creativity and brain ability lessened from the lack of reading. Tell me it aint so. 

In addition to getting books from the library, the local branch organizes many arts and crafts days too. Every year in the summer.  We never fail to go to the rock painting day and in a past year that produced an incredible painting on a rock from my older daughter. Sadly this year she didnt like her painting (of a Hello Kitty take off) and erased the cat prompting both me and the librarian organizer to exclaim, "Noooooo".  

We also did tie dyeing and my t shirt came out quite well. I have never done that before and it is a shame as it is quite easy. I guess to make the really impressive designs you have to be doing it for some time. But none is a loser.   

These were all great little outings which gets us doing something during the day if we dont have a reading day, which was impossible this year as my older daughter would just look at her telephone all day.  Getting out for a little trip got her off her phone even if it was just to do grocery shopping.  

I understand that you might be confused thinking that these are not "trips" in the usual sense of going on an outing, but yes and no, yes they are.  When you add up all these little trips and that we have to plan them and the clothes trips can take three to four hours, it is the same as a sightseeing trip which will take that long too.  Granted they are not really educational (well the library trips are) they are more functional.  But when you finish dinner in the night and ask each other "what are we going to do tomorrow" and I say or my daughter says " we need to do clothes shopping" well then that is the plan for tomorrow and what will take up a big planned chunk of the day. Or we might plan to get subs for lunch and that will involve a walk along the river too which is a nice planned outing.   We have to put it in the schedule just like a sightseeing trip. I think even my wife will stay home some weekends when she has to buy clothes or visit her Mothers or go to Ikea.  It is the planned weekend "trip" just like an educational sightseeing trip, but again, it is functional not so much the educational.    But let me get to the sightseeing trip(s) now in part two.  

I have said, I prefer to listen to music without singers, but it doesnt have to be electronic music.  The Avengers VI "real cool hits"  really real surf music, for instance is a classic which i listened to this time while writing. Its on Sympathy for the Record Industry (SFRI) records.